Howard Fineman, who was once arrested during his time reporting for The Courier Journal as he pursued a scoop, before going on to become one of the biggest names in U.S. political journalism, died this week.

Fineman was 75. He died Monday night after a two-year bout with pancreatic cancer, according to his wife, Amy Nathan, who called him “brilliant and extraordinary” in a social media post.

“He couldn’t have been adored more,” she wrote. “The world was a better place because he lived in it and wrote about it.”

Fineman built national fame during his 30 years covering American politics for Newsweek. He later left the outlet for the Huffington Post and was a frequent on-air contributor on networks such as MSNBC.

But before then, the Pittsburgh native born in 1948 got his start in Louisville in 1973 as a reporter for The Courier Journal, where he covered everything from state politics to the Kentucky coal industry — and once ended up in court over his reporting.

In May 1974, Fineman and Louisville Times reporter Jerry Hicks were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after they were found in a Continental Inn room adjoining a separate room where a private Louisville Fraternal Order of Police meeting was taking place.

A legal pad, tape recorder and tape cartridge were confiscated, The Courier Journal reported at the time, and the FOP alleged the pair were “caught red-handed laying flat on the floor” with notes on what had been said in the meeting. Then-publisher Barry Bingham Jr. described the incident as “almost a textbook clash between the First Amendment right of a newspaper to collect news and an individual’s or organization’s Fourth Amendment right to privacy.”

They were found not guilty by a police court Oct. 1, 1974, with Time Magazine reporting the prosecution “had failed to prove that they had disturbed the meeting.” The news was published in The Courier Journal the following day on the newspaper’s front page, alongside headlines covering the start of the Watergate trial and a pending vote to raise Louisville teachers’ salaries.

The incident didn’t derail Fineman’s career. He joined The Courier Journal’s Washington bureau in the late 1970s and left for a job with Newsweek in 1980, where he remained until 2010.

He continued to tout his Louisville roots after leaving the Bluegrass State. A graduate of the University of Louisville’s law school and a fan of the college’s basketball teams, Fineman frequently wrote about the city on his X account, calling Louisville his “professional home town” in a 2023 post shared with his more than 230,000 followers.

“In many ways, that was the best,” Fineman said of his time in Louisville, according to Huffington Post editor Sam Stein. “The irony is for many reporters back then who were hungry to come to Washington they didn’t realize how lucky they were. It was wonderful, and I loved every minute of it.”

Fineman is survived by his wife, a sister and two children, according to The Washington Post.

Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Howard Fineman, political journalist with Louisville ties, dies